Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday February 22, 2013 @07:04PM
from the hip-to-be-robbed dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Back in late 2012, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg attributed the increase in statistical city-wide crime to Apple, noting that thieves had a propensity to target folks using iPhones and iPads. As an illustration of the problem, there were 3,890 more Apple product thefts than in 2012 than there were in 2011. At the time, Mayor Bloomberg's press secretary Marc La Vorgna explained that 'if you just took away the jump in Apple', crime in New York City would have been down year over year. Indeed, the number of major crimes reported in 2011 in NYC came in at 104,948 compared to 108.432 in 2012. If you exclude Apple related thefts from the figures, then the crime rate in 2012 is essentially the same as it was in 2011. In light of that, a new report from the New York Post details that Apple is now working with the NYPD in an effort to curb iPhone and other Apple related thefts."

This is a poor example. It assumes that Bill does't already have a phone and isn't buying minutes already. Unless Bill has been living under a rock or is so opposed to buying his own phone which can still be had for cheap, he already has a phone and is buying service from someone. In that case, getting a newer, shinier phone doesn't give anyone additional value outside of the thief. If Bill is poor or on hard times, he's not going to be doing business with a major carrier, so they won't get Bill's business

This doesn't really make sense. If Bill is so poor he's resorting to stealing an iPhone (or buying a stolen iPhone, more likely), then his legal phone is going to be some dirt-cheap POS, not a smartphone at all. When he supports the stolen iPhone industry, he's helping sell brand-new iPhones (to replace the stolen ones), which cost hundreds of dollars each. This means lots of profit for Apple.

Actually your slant is misdirected. It's the cell providers who would brick a phone, and they can do so easily but have resisted calls to do so until recent pressure from certain congressmen and law enforcement brought the issue to a boiling point. It has nothing to do with 'Apple', other than the fact that those phones havea high market value, but rather there was nothing preventing a criminal from activating a known stolen phone on a providers network.

The simple fact is, that cell providers will happily continue to allow criminals to use your stolen phone, even knowing that it's stolen, because it's a source of revenue.

Why brick them? Just making using them useless. Every connection to network: WiFi or Cell, just opens a FaceTime connection, so the police can direct comunate with the current holder. So clean records.

Someone files a false police report and someone's phone is bricked
Then the police department and the wireless service provider are both at fault for not verifying your identity and your ownership of the phone.

Correct. Why is this such a difficult concept in the US? I use an unlocked iPhone in Australia. If it is stolen I promptly contact my telco, identify myself and they permanently deny that phone access to any network in my country. I buy a newer model phone and the dick who took my phone has a paperweight. I claim the loss on my home insurance and pay the insurance excess of a few hundred dollars and no market is created for stolen iPhones.

It is very hard and highly illegal. Hard enough that web forums are full of criminals who want to swap their stolen smartphone with somebody else's stolen smartphone from another country (since the IMEI blocks usually only happen for a single country).

Regulation is not hard in the USA. The problem is that you want regulation which benefits regular citizens, rather than "regulation" which benefits huge corporations who pay generous "campaign contributions". The USA isn't very good at the former, but it's great at the latter.

Why not simply brick any device reported stolen? I understand it's done in other countries (or for other devices).

Why not use Lowjack? Find the bastards, what they're doing besides stealing iPhones, iPads or any other electronic device, and take them down. Is it really a stigma if you steal something, you should be punished?

Sadly I have yet to see a decent looking android phone around the lunch table at work.I don't understand why no one makes an android phone that doesn't look like crap after a week in someone's front pocket.A superior OS, UI, hardware and casing should be a winner.

I thought the same thing when I read the summary. In one breath they are talking about Major crimes, and in the next sentence they lump in iphone theft in that group. Yet if you report an iPhone theft the police won't do a damn thing about it other than give you some paper to fill out. How is that considered a Major Crime?

If you report a $3000 bicycle stolen, they won't do anything besides give you a piece of paper.

Same probably applies to a $3000 motorcycle (and honestly, to many cars costing far more). Those crimes are pretty hard to investigate and they probably figure that if you cared that much, you would have insurance.

You don't report it to a COP, you take it to a local sheriff as those get elected! They love getting results of capturing the thief as it brings good vibes to the community and makes him look like a hero.

We're talking about New York City. According to Wikipedia the New York City Sheriff is appointed by the mayor, not elected. I also doubt that everyone with a lost phone is going to be able to talk to this sheriff, there are just too many people.

As fr as I can tell they don't say how iPhone thefts there were in 2011. Apple sold a lot more phones in 2012 than in 2011, and before 2011 it's a tiny percentage overall. So it may be that "per capita" (per iPhoneita) thefts were well down.

La Vorgna will now be accused (perhaps correctly, and we could run some stats about that) of blaming Apple for NYC crime. The other headline-that-writes-itself is iPhone Thefts/Finally/ Affect Apple Profits Negatively (The Empire* Strikes Back).

When I step on the subway there is often an announcement requesting we do just that. It doesn't stop people from using their phones (apple or otherwise), which is enough to let a thief know you have it (no "flashing" required).

Apple's consumers tend to want to show off the fact that they are Apple consumers. Even their phone & tablet covers have a hole to show off the logo.

Yeah, and BMW owners like to show off because they don't cover the logos either.

I fail to see how the presence or absence of a hole showing the logo provides evidence in support of your claim. My case has no hole and yet you can still tell by a casual glance that I have an iphone.

I don't care who sees my phone. The iphone isn't a status symbol. Was it ever? Maybe very, very briefly among a tiny crowd (who pretty much all had iphones.) I can't imagine wanting anything to do with someone who thought "Oooh, he

It's really tough to fight those trolls. The only way some people can rationalize that someone else thinks an iPhone better suits their needs is to accuse them of wanting it only for a status symbol. They actually believe that is why people buy them. The very idea is laughable, but their raging hate for Apple blinds them from the fact that some people find iDevices best. I am one of them. Oh, and my iPad cover DOES NOT have a hole for the icon. My phone is a regular dumb-phone, because that is my choice.

This is a ridiculous supposition. Are we suppose to believe that the criminals responsible for these thefts were lured into stealing by the flashy Apple gizmos? Or that these criminals would reject crime and find honest work if only New York could rid itself of Apple products?

This is just another example of politicians passing the blame to something else. In this case it's Apple, as blaming Apple for life's ills is in vogue at the moment.

Or that these criminals would reject crime and find honest work if only New York could rid itself of Apple products?

The claim (verified by the numbers in the summary!) is that crime wouldn't have risen if not for apple thefts. The bigger question is, would those thieves have stolen other items if apple products weren't so common, valuable, and portable? Or do apple products present a uniquely common, accessible, and valuable target for would be thieves? Such that without an increase in the number or thieves

When I grew up in NYC, I wouldn't have been flashing an expensive camera around my neck; today people walk around with $500 to $800 iPhones and iPads plainly visible and accessible. In fact half the time they're holding the iPads up in the air in one hand taking pictures. So easy to grab!

The claim (verified by the numbers in the summary!) is that crime wouldn't have risen if not for apple thefts.

The claim is actually that if we took the number of all crimes, and subtracted the number of iPhone thefts, the result would be less than the number of the previous years. And that claim is true, but meaningless.

There were many more iPhones around in 2012 than 2011. The percentage of iPhones among all phones is higher, so it would have to be expected that the number stolen would be higher. If Apple hadnl't sold any phones, almost everyone buying an iPhone would have bought some other phone, and all those

This is a ridiculous supposition. Are we suppose to believe that the criminals responsible for these thefts were lured into stealing by the flashy Apple gizmos? Or that these criminals would reject crime and find honest work if only New York could rid itself of Apple products?

This is just another example of politicians passing the blame to something else. In this case it's Apple, as blaming Apple for life's ills is in vogue at the moment.

Thieves steal valuable things that are easy to fence. If you want to know what people covet most, take a look at what is being stolen. End of story.

No, the thief's are motivated by the high resale value of Apple products. At a pawn shop an old iPod Touch with max ram get get well over $100. And old iPhone almost $100. Steal one device a day and you are doing better than minimum wage, tax free. Hell, $100 a day, even three days a week, is almost 1600 a year. Unless you are into expensive drugs that is a living.

For the iPhone, it might be a simple deal. A police report is filed, the serial number is reported to Apple, and Apple reports the fact to

If your achievements are always short of your goals, doesn't that make you a loser?

Of course not. If A has the goal to make a million, and makes only $900,000, and B has the goal to make $10,000 and makes $12,000, who is the loser?

The _proper_ use of goals is to use them as motivational tools. The best way to set a goal is to set it so high, that it looks just barely achievable. Such a goal will usually _not_ be achieved, but leads to the highest _actual_ achievement. Setting goals that are easily achieved leads to less actual achievement (while meeting the goal), while goals that are

How about just making it require a password to power off, put it in airplane mode, or disable Find My iPhone so you can use find my phone? As it is you can still turn the phone off even if the lock screen is passworded. I don't want to have to enter a PIN every time I unlock my phone, but I also don't want a thief to be able to disable Find My iPhone (such as by turning it off), and I wouldn't mind entering a password on the rare occasions I turn the phone off or put it in airplane mode. Do any Android phones have a feature like that?

I don't think you understand how politics and police in a big city work.

There's the police force that the poor get, the police force that the middle class get, and the police force that the rich get. Generally, when cops come into poor neighborhoods, it's to bash heads. In middle class neighborhoods, you get sympathetic cops who politely explain that they're too busy to investigate your report. In the rich neighborhoods, they drop everything in order to find your missing poodle.

Once we had two detectives come to out datacenter because someone sent an email with a return address hosted by a customer. No idea whether it was a real drop box or a faked envelope From, but the complaint was made by this annoying guy that took all that nonsense seriously. So yeah, they do have resources to waste. At least they recovered stolen property here and didn't just chase ghosts.

From the Article "The California-based company then informs the NYPD of the device’s current location — and it can track it even if it was reregistered with a different wireless provider."...they then boast how they have tracked a phone to brazil!?

Nobody, no-one concerned that a Apple is tracking their customers, and can do so without their knowledge.

You're mistaking Apple for Google. Apple has always been evil. People like evil, as long as it looks cool.

Google can track your location, they know your browsing history, your shopping habits, what hobbies you have what kind of clothes you like to wear, who your friends are, what you look like, they can rifle through your email if you use their G-mail service, they know what kind of porn you like... the list goes on, and on, and on...... and you two are worried that Apple can find out where your phones are?

You're mistaking Apple for Google. Apple has always been evil. People like evil, as long as it looks cool.

The meme of "looks cool" being the only reason people buy Apple is stupid and needs to die. You need to drop your blind hate and see that people buy Apple because the devices fit their needs better. That's why I bought an iPad. I really couldn't care less what I look like using it. In fact, I rarely use it in public.

From the Article "The California-based company then informs the NYPD of the device’s current location — and it can track it even if it was reregistered with a different wireless provider."...they then boast how they have tracked a phone to brazil!?

Nobody, no-one concerned that a Apple is tracking their customers, and can do so without their knowledge.

Seriously "Do no evil?"

You have to opt in and setup Find My iPhone, so I don't see how that is without their knowledge. Unless you are talking about something different?

Of course, the bump in crime is Apple's fault for selling them in NYC. The mayor should outlaw iPhone ownership, especially the more expensive and capable versions. It would dovetail nicely with outlawing gun ownership, outlawing the sale of large sodas, and outlawing the use of trans fats.